General English Level 6 V 3

UNIT 02 What do you think? TOPIC 01 History or progress?

	LANGUAGE FOCUS 05 Nominalisations

The article says:
	However, if plans go ahead to demolish the old four-storey King George building on York Square …

The writer uses the verb "demolish".

And:
	Demolition will begin soon after, and we should see the new high-rise building …

The writer uses the noun "demolition".

Choosing the noun form is called nominalisation . Nominalisation is used more often in written than in spoken texts. Nominalisation can help to keep the sentence short.
If the writer hadn't used the noun form, the second sentence above would have been much longer:

The company will begin to demolish the building soon after, and we should see the new high-rise building ...

The article also says:
	He said he would be discussing the various options with his staff as soon as he has definite news from the building's owners. The building's owners are holding discussions with Construction giants Wilmlow … If we look at other cities around the world, they are all expanding upward. The plans for the new building include an expansion of the current car park facilities …

We also use nominalisations so we can add an adjective:

The politician commented on the new health reforms
The politician made an interesting comment on the new health reforms.

VERB	NOUN
to comment	comment
to connect	connection
to approach	approach
to consult	consultation
to construct	construction
to introduce	introduction
to agree	agreement
to lose	loss
to know	knowledge
to imagine	imagination
to advise	advice

Examples

I don't think we have been introduced .
He wrote a long introduction at the beginning of his book.

She answered the question correctly.
What is the answer ?

This tastes really strange. What is it?
The food had an unusual taste .

Now go to 06 WRITING Nominalisations.